Jack White's Third Man vinyl pressing plant set to open in Detroit

Third Man Records on Canfield in Detroit's Midtown area will be home to a new vinyl records pressing plant. Detroit native and musician Jack White founded the Third Man Records record label in Detroit in 2001 and opened this shop in 2015.

Since announcing plans to open the production facility in late 2015, the Detroit native's company has been busy outfitting the plant with eight new energy efficient presses capable of pumping out 5,000 platters every eight hours.

The 10,000-square-foot record pressing plant is in the rear of the former White Stripes frontman's Third Man Records store at 441 W. Canfield St. in Detroit's Cass Corridor neighborhood, and brings with it 50 new jobs. The plant, which joins 20 or so similar facilities in the U.S, will press vinyl for Third Man releases and take orders from outside labels. (Third Man Records will continue its relationship with United Record Pressing in Nashville.)

"The resurgence in popularity of vinyl records has left many small imprints, 'bedroom' labels and independent artists without the ability to press small runs of records in reasonable amounts of time," the company said in a news release. "Third Man Pressing aims to dedicate a percentage of its capacity each month to pressing records for clients of this ilk, alleviating the bottlenecking of the production caused by major label orders, and bringing more niche, regionally-interesting pressings from inspired individuals onto record shelves worldwide."

Third Man also touts efforts to make the plant environmentally sustainable, with advances such as a "closed-loop, chilled-water system that maximizes water sustainability" and a series of high-efficiency hydraulic systems. There are also digital touch screens for temperature, helping to make it the "only fully climate-controlled pressing plant work environment in the world." Measures were also taken to limit noise pollution from the loud machines.

Opening day festivities will look a lot like Record Store Day, meaning there'll be exclusive releases (including new pressings of White Stripes albums) and live performances. Third Man also hints at a "few additional surprises," which could mean anything from a Jack White set to additional, yet-to-be-ironed-out releases.

Work in the pressing plant can be viewed from a platform inside the store. Tours will be made available later.

Third Man announced plans to open the plant when it debuted the Detroit store in late 2015. The company had just purchased eight machines from Germany and initially hoped to open by spring 2016.

In June 2015, White partnered with Shinola/Detroit LLC founder Tom Kartsotis to purchase the building that also houses the Shinola flagship store.

"We reached a point where we wanted to start pressing our own records," Third Man principal Ben Swank told Billboard at the time. "It wasn't something we ever wanted to do in Nashville; we've got a really good relationship with United there and felt like if we were going to start pressing our own stuff we shouldn't do it in (Nashville) and directly compete with someone we've worked so closely with and will continue to work so closely with. We'll do our own stuff but we'd like to help out smaller labels, the bedroom labels, that have to wait longer to get their stuff (pressed) sometimes and maybe work with those types of clients. We'll have to see as we get into it."